So here's the scéal after 4 months of trying to simultaneously learn Irish (abroad) and teach it to a 2 year-old.

One important detail is that things are going well enough for me to continue. I can't find anyone else giving progress updates, so I wonder if everyone gives up. Maybe I'm doing something right. Or maybe it's a fool's errand and I'm just stubborn.

The two most effective tactics have been songs and stories. I said in September that songs would be an easy win, and they were. I bought almost every songbook with a CD and we've been singing Irish songs every day. The only caveat I'll add is that learning these songs has taken me more time and effort than expected. The best book+CD sets I got were:

Ící Pící

Ceol Leat

Plura Lura

Gugalaí Gug (only a few songs on this are good, but I want Connemara material)

I was surprised that stories also worked. Mostly I use the nine small green books of classic stories by An Gúm (Goldilocks, 3 pigs, Red Riding Hood, etc.). My weak Irish is a limiting factor here because the text in such books is never enough to really tell the stories, but because I'm using classic stories, there are multiple versions available and by combining the texts I end up able to tell the stories without having to invent too many sentences myself. One helpful book has been Tomás na hOrdóige agus Scéalta Eile. The book has ten classic stories and is aimed at teachers in Gealscoils. I couldn't use it on its own, but gives me a few more phrases to use when we're reading those same stories in the small An Gúm books.

One thing that's going slower than expected is my own learning. I've made almost no progress with Colloquial Irish. I was hoping that by now I could alternate between English-only days and Irish-only days, but that will have to wait. English is still the main language, but when something is broken, closed, etc. I'll throw in a Tá sé briste/dúnta or whatever. On the other hand, my vocabulary has improved due to learning all those songs, and the time spent on learning songs is probably part of the reason I've had no time for grammar books. So I'm making progress, just not how I planned.

My biggest stumbling block is how to pronounce written Irish. I'll start a separate thread about this. My plan was to focus on one dialect, and I picked Connemara, but I hear mh, dh or f pronounced in different ways and I often don't know if it's for a grammatical reason or because speaker A lives two bus journeys away from speaker B. And I find it hard to see which vowels are not pronounced and are only there to make the consonant broad/slender. I've found a dozen pronunciation guides on the internet but they focus on sounds or letters and I'm not able to make the jump from there to words. When I tell people about this problem, they say "Ah, don't stress about that, a lot of people have mixed pronunciation". Ok, but mixed or pure, I need to have one consistent way to read whatever text I have in front of me.

I was in Dublin at Christmas and the nice woman in An Siopa Leabhar gave me a CnaG leaflet about oversees Irish-learner groups. I'll be looking into that in 2018.

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Throw away everything about orthography and just look at chapter one of Nancy StensonThat is, as far as I have discovered, the best primer of Irish orthography.If you memorise the rules as she has laid them out clearly, you will see that Irish orthography is about 95% phonetic and predictable. The other 5% is the result of the caighdeán vs. the dialects. If you use Irish from before the spelling reform, you will see it is more reliable and understandable for reading, but less easy to spell, whereas after the reform it becomes more difficult for reading but easier for spelling.This change favors learners over educated readers, which should not surprise anyone aware of the situation of Irish. English, on the other hand, preserves spellings that favor educated readers over learners. Again, this should not surprise anyone... but I am getting carried away.

I am getting married in July. Children will follow (God willing!!). Then I will let you know how it goes. It will be easier for me as I will speak only Irish. Also it will be easier because I can look at your resource lists :P Go raibh maith agat as sin.

Also by the way let us know if you want this conversation to be in Irish. Déarfainn nach bhfuil mórán daoine ann atá ag éirí páistí a thógáil leis an nGaeilge nach bhfuil an teanga acusan féin hahahaha

Another five months have passed and my son is now three. I think I remember saying the songbook Bliain na nAmhrán was useless a few months ago but now we listen to it every day, and we got the Ceol na Mara CD too, so along with Gugalaí Gug and Peigín Leitir Mór, we have two-and-a-half hours of songs in Connacht Irish. I slow them down 20% to make the words clearer, which turns it into three hours.

I've found no other kids songbooks in Connacht Irish, so I'm now adding Joe Heaney songs and I'll be adding other traditional singers soon. (Suggestions can also be added to the thread about gaeltacht singers)

I'm now focussing even more on just Connacht Irish. I'm still struggling with pronunciation and I think listening to exclusively one dialect is the only way I can simplify the connection between the letter groups and the sounds and thus have any hope of mastering the pronunciation. On my next trip to Dublin I might try to find a Connacht native speaker who can give me a few hours of pronunciation help. I saw one or two on tutorhub.ie. Other suggestions welcome.

We've gotten another dozen or so storybooks and the best were Fiacla Mhamó and Bróga Thomáis from the SOS series from O'Brien Press. They say they're to be read by kids of ages 8+ but I find them great as stories to be read by an adult to a 3 year old. I find the SOS stories simpler than other series aimed at the same age group. There are 16 books in the series and I've now ordered the other 14. Other books that have gone down well are the two Seán agus Coisí books and the Ruairí agus Úna books.

I've downloaded sixty or eighty recordings of kids books being read on soundcloud, youtube, etc. I'm sure that listening to these myself would be a great way to choose which books to buy but I just haven't gotten around to listening to them yet.

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AI slow them down 20% to make the words clearer, which turns it into three hours.

bahahahaha I am imagining a dreadful 'demon carnival' sound like slowing down recordings used to create before modern technology

Ha No, don't worry. The player I use is VLC and it changes the speed without changing the pitch. mplayer has similar, as does totem (aka Gnome Videos). Ah, I guess most video software does this nowadays. But below 80% the sound quality does start to deteriorate.

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Have you looked at the Mantra Lingua website yet? http://uk.mantralingua.com They have bilingual children's books in various languages including Irish and French. I like their version of Clann Lir/The Children of Lir retold by Dawn Casey and beautifully illustrated by Diana Mayo ISBN 978 1 8526 9818 8 - in French it's - Les Enfants de Lir ISBN 978 1 8526 9897 3 (so you can put the two together). Perhaps he's still a bit young for that kind of thing and of course it's a very sad story, but there's Cogar, Cogar/Listen, Listen ISBN 978 1 8461 1417 5. One of the problems I have trying to find traditional Irish stories suitable for children, is that they're often just so bloodthirsty. Obviously these would be for later on, but there's Scéalta Sí published by Sinéad de Valera, (no less) - ISBN 978 0 9535 8368 3. They've been retranslated back into Irish by Diarmuid Ó Tuama, though why they weren't published in Irish or in a bilingual edition in the first place beggars belief. Here are a couple of other books of children's rhymes I have on my shelves that you might like to get hold of - both compiled by Cliodna Cussen - Trupall, Trapall - ISBN 978 1 8579 1776 5 (An Gúm) and Inniu an Luan published by Coiscéim (but it doesn't seem to have an ISBN). Slán go fóill Franc